Elizabeth Yarnell got her start in the film and video production industry in 1988 as a production assistant and gopher for legendary director Jon Husband, and worked in many roles through the ‘90s including as an associate producer for several shows on the Jones Computer Network. She was among the first to train in non-linear digital film editing on the then-revolutionary AVID system during a stint at a local NBC-affiliate station in 1991.
While putting herself through graduate school to pursue a Masters in Liberal Studies with a Concentration in Creative Writing (’97, University of Denver), she became a published journalist and an in-demand instructional designer. She spent the following decade designing training programs and became a specialist in multimedia training design.
By 2005, she had become interested in natural health and published the first version of her popular cookbook, Glorious One-Pot Meals: A Revolutionary New Quick and Healthy Approach to Dutch Oven Cooking. Re-published in 2009 by Broadway Books/Random House/Clarkson-Potter, and currently still in print, the book has sold more than 50,000 copies.
After completing her studies in 2011 to become a Board-Certified Naturopathic Doctor (ND), she founded a nationwide clinic for food sensitivity testing and dietary therapies to help people in chronic physical distress take control of their lives through what they eat.
In 2012, she was tasked to administer a grant from Colorado Creative Industries at Denver Public School’s magnet school for the gifted and talented, Polaris@Ebert Elementary. As a parent volunteer together with another parent volunteer, Metro State College Professor of Film Vincent Piturro, they designed the Polaris Film Project to introduce every student in the K-5 school to digital storytelling.
Over the next two years, they honed the program to make it educationally valid and consistent and in 2014 they officially launched The Make-a-Movie Workshop Ltd. to bring the program into other schools. In 2015, the name was adjusted to Digistars Make-a-Movie Workshop.
Beginning with two schools in September, 2014, the program grew to service nine schools by June, 2015. Summer of 2015 featured five weeks of summer camp, and more than thirteen schools were on board for the 2015-2016 school year. The studio location in central Denver opened for day camps over Thanksgiving break in 2015.
Elizabeth lives with her husband and two children in Denver, CO.